Renewable Energy

There is a massive drive toward solar and wind turbine energy. Mankind has ear marked these two methods as both affordable, and sustainable with enough return on financial investment for government and private corporation to make the process viable. Some countries with huge water flows such as America and Portugal are taking advantage of tidal and water flows, building large dams. These dams are proving so effective that by day they are powering the whole local area, and by night, the oversupply is being used to pump the water right back to the top for the next days use. That makes the electric produced truly 0 impact on the environment and the way forward for a sustainable future.

Renewable energy costs are dropping all the time as we are finding new and innovative technology to incorporate into our everyday lives. Take Elon Musks recent solar tiles. The home need only have 40% solar tiles to meet the whole house energy requirement. This means that homeowners with 70% and up as suggested by Elon, could then use the excess to power their car as well. This would make the average household carbon emissions close to perfect. We must continue to work on food production, and packaging methods to be truly perfect.

Solar power is a favoured renewable source of energy at the moment because where we are with technology right now, we can make solar panels to last 30 years, that will financially pay us back four or more times in in the lifespan of the solar panel, as well as being a product that can be mass produced and installed at low cost, with minimal environmental impact.

Tidal power is very much in it’s infancy however brilliant theories would place large turbines in the sea and allow only the tide to create all power. The problem we face is the corrosion from salt water and the maintenance of these turbines under water which makes the process economically difficult at this present time. I am confident we will come up with an effective solution as this is a great source of power that we must take advantage of at some point. It is not reliant on sun, or wind, it will always be a constant and therefore of extremely high value when forecasting energy requirement and output as we would have full control of when and how we created the power we required. It’s just such a shame that only two percent of all energy is made in this fashion. One such problem is how to make the financial investment upfront for such a grand scale project. We are trying with wind farms on a large scale in the UK now.

Renewal energy has become more innovative in the last twenty years than ever. We now fit our cars with dynamos to self power at the wheels whilst on long motorway trips. The dynamos turn and produce electricity, this electricity then feeds back into the system creating more drive. The principal is breathtaking for a green enthusiast such as I.